Defend to survive an attack or interfere with a foe’s action.

Is a monster trying to eat your face? Is a foe pushing you out of the way as they flee your wrath? What about when that cultist tries to stab you in both kidneys? Defend, defend, defend.

Defend is the only reactive action in Fate Condensed. You use it to stop something from happening outside your turn, so you’re often facing an opposing roll rather than a set difficulty. Your enemy rolls, and you immediately roll to defend, so long as you’re the target or can justify your opposition (which often makes you the target). Aspects or stunts may provide justification.

Your outcomes when defending are:

• If you fail against an attack, you take a hit, which you must absorb with stress (page XX) or consequences (page XX). Regardless, the enemy succeeds as described for their action.

• If you tie, proceed according to the tie result for the opposed action.

• If you succeed, you don’t take a hit or you deny the enemy’s action.

• If you succeed with style, you don’t take a hit, you deny the enemy’s action, and you even get a boost as you gain the upper hand for a moment.

Continuing from the previous example, the corpse gets to defend itself against Ruth. The GM rolls [-][0][0][+], which doesn’t change the creature’s Mediocre (+0) Athletics.

Because Ruth’s effort was higher, her attack succeeds by two shifts, and the corpse is a little closer to being down for good. Had the corpse rolled better, then its defense would have succeeded, and the undead monstrosity would have avoided taking a hit.